A blog designed to discuss how organizations are leveraging their human capital in order to increase business results through increased productivity, efficiency, and accountability. By understanding the linkage between employee engagement and customer engagement, companies can focus their efforts on what matters most.

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Monday, February 21, 2011

In the most recent edition of HR Magazine, there was a very interesting article by Edward Lawler, Jay Jamrog and John Boudreau, "Shining Light on the HR Profession" (membership required) regarding HR's positioning post recession.

SHRM distributed a survey to approximately 1000 HR executives and other types of managers to organizations ranging in size from 1,000 to more than 100,000 employees.

For me, the interesting results were these:

HR Executives felt that they did improve effectiveness and their strategic role as a result of how HR responded to the recession. AND

Not only did HR Executives toot their own horn but when managers were asked the same questions they agreed that HR had gained strategic and effectiveness ground.

This is the good news, HR gained ground....but there were areas that were cited where HR needs improvements:

Talent Management-HR needs to make sure that they are committed to the quality of their talent management decisions and that their performance management system provides accurate data about their talent.

Analytics and Metrics-No shocker here from my last few posts on the subject. The HR leaders who emphasize numbers were the ones that made the most gains in their effectiveness in the survey. Enough said...

Innovation-HR needs to be open to new practices that lead to tangible results. By constantly looking at new and creative ways to solve business problems, HR can really add to its perception and reputation by being innovative.

I keep reading and hearing anecdotal data from both sides on this HR value topic. I read articles like the one described above that has a glass half full. I also, here anecdotally, that it has been too little effort too late, on HR's part, so the business has started to look outside of HR to get the 3 areas accomplished above.

What are your thoughts?

Think about your current organization, did you gain ground post recession by keeping the train on the tracks? What have you done in the 3 areas mentioned above that would add to your HR street cred?